For capability fans only

I know a few social researchers who are trying (without much success) to try to create some kind of assessment of (Sen’s definition of) poverty based on the Capability approach. There are quite a number of conceptual problems here, and difficulties resulting from relating the theory to the pragmatic task of creating a questionnaire: I have an idea how to solve these problems but as usual no one will pay me to do it! I think you are wise to stay on the conceptual level for now.

As with Ingrid, if anyone knows anyone who has any money and would be interested in following up these issues please contact me!

I read the summary of our report, and it appears to be mainly about sustainability issues. Are these not two separate issues, measuring a capabilities based well-being of people on the one hand, and measuring the sustainability of this well-being on the other hand?

Ingrid, you might find this paper from Emma Samman useful. I’ve not read it in full but it seems to address some of the same issues, and I was reading it just before I saw your post, so obviously it’s destiny or something.

A few things this makes me think of:

A fruitful connection between Sen’s canonical list and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

Is achieved functionings similar to the concept of achieved status?

Does the capability freedom idea join in the old distinction between equality of opportunity vs equality of condition? Perhaps on the side of equality of opportunity?

Do people in your model have any social obligation to enhance their capabilities?

A society which heavily subsidizes education, and in which adult education programs are well developed in particular, will strongly support people to generate a decent income.

Well, not necessarily. A society could heavily subsidise the wrong sort of education, a sort of education irrelevant to generating a decent income. Or indeed a sort of education that effectively stops people from generating a decent income. Bad teachers can cause their students to regress. Inputs are not the same as outputs. Especially in education.

Next, the input of disposable time can also be redistributed by the government in a number of
direct and indirect ways. …. The only point we wish to make is that the existence of these policies demonstrates that governments are perfectly capable of shaping the distribution of time and money between different demographic groups, if reasons for doing so exist.

Are they? If a government allows time-credits or what not, then assuming that the worker was doing something useful in the first place, that generally implies that someone else has to pick up their job. (In some situations of long-term work, a job make be able to be left undone for a while, I am only speaking of the normal situation). What happens if the people the government is redistributing the work to don’t want to do it? Or can’t do it?

For example: the domains of mobility and non-discrimination are not competing. Improved mobility can be achieved without jeopardizing the capability of non-discrimination and respect, since public inputs in these domains are hardly competing at the level of the government budget, and also because legislation which aims to rule out discrimination resembles a pure collective good.

I think you overestimate the capability of Governments. Can a Government really think equally well about “improved mobility” if it is also expected to form policy on “non-discrimination and respect”? Ministers only have 24 hours in the day, and they only have limited brain cells, just like everyone else. And of course no Government will only be thinking about “improved mobility” and “non-dsicrimination and respect”, instead they have about fifty million other things on their plate.